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The Origins of the Idea of 'Latin' America
It has been the conventional wisdom of the past several decades, since the publication in 1968 of John Leddy Phelan's influential essay, 'Pan-Latinism, French Intervention in Mexico (1861-7) and the Genesis of the Idea of Latin America', that 'Latin America' was originally a French concept, l'Amérique latine, used by French intellectuals to justify French imperialism in Mexico under Napoleon III.1 There existed, the French argued, a linguistic and cultural affinity, a unity, of 'Latin' peoples for whom France was the natural leader and inspiration (and their defender against Anglo-Saxon, mainly US, influence and, ultimately, domination). The idea of a race latine, different from the Anglo-Saxon 'race', was first conceptualised in Lettres sur l'Amérique du Nord (2 vols., Paris, 1836) by Michel Chevalier (1806-79). After a lengthy stay in the United States (1833-35), in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocqueville, Chevalier had visited Mexico and Cuba. He later became a prominent member of the Collège de France, the Council of State and the Senate, and a close advisor to Napoleon III. He was the principal apologist for French intervention in Mexico in 1861 in, for example, the articles he wrote for the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1862 and in Le Méxique ancien et moderne (1863). But the first use of the expression l'Amérique latine known to Phelan was by L. M. Tisserand in an article entitled 'Situation de la latinité', published in the Revue des Races Latines in January 1861.
In fact, a number of Spanish American writers and intellectuals - many of them, it is true, resident in Paris - had used the expression 'América Latina' several years earlier. For its very first use there are three principal candidates: José María Torres Caicedo, a Colombian journalist, poet and critic (1830-89); Francisco Bilbao, a Chilean socialist intellectual (1823-65); and Justo Arosemena, a Panamanian/Colombian jurist, politician, sociologist and diplomat (1817-96).
In 1856 Torres Caicedo wrote a long poem entitled 'Las dos Américas' which was published in El Correo de Ultramar, a Spanish-language newspaper published in Paris, in February 1857. Along with several references to 'América del Sur' and 'América española', and ending with a passionate call for the...